


Absolution

by miragoat



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst, I have no idea what I'm doing, M/M, Post-Light's Hope, WotLK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 21:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miragoat/pseuds/miragoat
Summary: His life was a world of moral absolutes with no room for doubting. There was right and there was wrong, clearly defined by the guiding Light he held in his heart. He understood the rules; he obeyed them without question. Right and wrong and black and white – a simple, fulfilling life for a man with no room for further hurts. When he heard that voice, his reality was shattered.





	1. Black and White

His life was a world of moral absolutes with no room for doubting. There was right and there was wrong, clearly defined by the guiding Light he held in his heart. He understood the rules; he obeyed them without question. Right and wrong and black and white – a simple, fulfilling life for a man with no room for further hurts. When he heard that voice, his reality was shattered.

He knew they were his enemy, bound to kill them by their master’s command. He knew they were soulless abominations wearing the flesh of what used to be noble men. They were a danger to his life. There was moral sense in culling them and protecting the holy ground of Light’s Hope from their foul presence. Wrong was wrong.

When he recognized that voice, he couldn’t bring himself to execute the death knight. Not because he feared – Tirion was too old to be afraid of anything, let alone a band of disposable undead servants – but because his heart longed to believe men could be redeemed. The voice beared the metallic tone of a death knight, but he recognized it from before death. Darion Mograine, the man who gave his life to save his father’s legacy from corruption. Darion, who wanted nothing more than to be a hero like his father. Right was right.

Right and wrong were absolute, but Darion lingered in the space between, righteous in his past and evil in his present. What could lie in Darion’s future, were he permitted to live it? What would Darion do if he realized his wrongs and remembered what he’d been? Darion was shades of grey, uncertainty incarnate.

Tirion didn’t know what that meant, but he faltered. He could judge good and evil as well as he could breathe. Years had tempered him for serving justice: justice for Lordaeron, justice for Taeran, justice for those who would burn his home. Killing Darion would be payment for the lives he’d taken, and certainly there were hundreds. Where was Darion’s justice? Was it in letting him live, or giving him the mercy of a quick, clean final death?

The Light spared him the pain of deciding. Darion was given a vision of the one thing that might redeem him, the thing he’d valued more than his own life and his own fate. It gave him a vision of his father.

Alexandros broke through the shackles of his servitude. He understood his fate, understood how deep his master’s betrayal ran. Above all, he realized the weight of what he’d done. Darion was no Arthas, proud of the atrocities committed against the living. Mograine was remorseful, he could sense it. When he tossed the beloved Ashbringer to Tirion, the paladin understood. Death wasn’t a fate meant for Darion Mograine, not yet. There was a greater purpose for him, one as ambiguous as his existence.

“Let me help you,” he said, and Darion accepted.

He’d known Darion in life. He was the one who’d told Darion the way to free his father. It was as good as snapping the boy’s neck, but without his father, Darion was inconsolable. Now, Tirion wondered what emotions he harbored. What did dead men feel? Was there room in his heart for joy in remembrance, or could he know only sorrow?

“What are you now, Mograine?”

Darion flinched at the unwelcome question. Tirion didn’t expect an answer – when Darion spoke, it was to give orders to his knights, not to indulge the curiosity of the living.

“If you didn’t know, Fordring, why did you spare us?”

It was a question he could never answer. Why had he spared Darion Mograine? Why had he insisted the Alliance show mercy as he had? What possessed him to trust the dead when they resented the living? It was so foolish and so very wrong.

“I had faith, not answers.”

Darion hummed his distaste for the answer. “What does your faith say about my brothers? How do you justify working with forces forged by darkness?”

“You are many things, Mograine, but darkness you are not. You didn’t have the soul for it.”

“If you believe that after all you’ve seen, you’re more senile than I imagined. I guess there was no other way to top saving an orc at Lordaeron’s expense.”

There it was, the first hint of a jab. It was something other than the pained silence of their usual meetings. Tirion delighted in it. Any sign of feeling from Darion was a sign there was a hint of a man in that undead shell. Any trace of humanity was a chance of redemption.

“Alexandros was never so sour, but I see traces of him in you. You’re able to stir the hearts of your people and command them against the Scourge. Having you on our side will be a great blessing, regardless of your… mixed background.” He forced himself to smile. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. In troubling times, one had to remember to smile.

“You defile his name by comparing us.”

“Only if you believe you’re beyond redemption. I don’t think you believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t have given up the Ashbringer and you wouldn’t have agreed to help the Argent Crusade.”

Darion glanced up at him. Blue eyes, but not like they were in life. Unnatural, glowing blue eyes, a mark of the Scourge’s foul magic holding his body together. Eyes he couldn’t read; eyes with unknowable thoughts and desires behind them.

“There has to be a better fate for you than this. I have hope, even now.”

He knew what Darion was thinking without the death knight speaking it. Then you are a fool. He loved accusing Tirion of weakness like he loved killing mindless Scourge. It was like he breathed it. Tirion lived off the hope he would see a better world in his lifetime; he couldn’t tell what fueled Darion. He knew, whatever it was, he couldn’t begin to comprehend it, not as long as he lived.


	2. Faith

“Your trust is unnerving,” Darion said. The thought was toneless, an afterthought, but Tirion knew there was more to it. There was always more with Darion, buried deep beneath the need for vengeance and the love for causing pain and all the other terrifying things that made him what he was.

It was unnerving to Tirion to hear the truth. He thought his heart might burst from disappointment. Darion didn’t know trust; his master was the ultimate image of betrayal. He didn’t like positive emotions, couldn’t understand them any more than he could understand Tirion’s attachment to his mortal life. Nothing he said, none of his reassurances or speeches about the Light or redemption, could get through that thick skull. It killed him.

Tirion dabbed at the cut on his face with a piece of linen cloth. His entire body ached. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t as young as he once was. Fighting the Scourge took all of his energy. Without Darion’s intervention, he might have fallen to Scourge. He would have been dead in the snow, his body ready for harvesting. He shuddered at the thought.

“You saved my life,” Tirion said. He’d known Darion was capable of great things, but seeing it was different than believing it. Less abstract, more confusing. “This is the second time.”

“What was I supposed to do, leave you to die? Unthinkable. You’d make a terrible death knight.”

A sign of a sense of humor. Tirion thanked the Light for that. Darion’s fingers were cold on his bare shoulder as he prodded at it – cold as death, Tirion thought as a strange chill washed over him. Darion had been strong in life, but those hands were stronger in death. He could feel it as the death knight snapped his shoulder back into place. He was holding back, taking care not to hurt Tirion.

“Thank you, Darion,” he said.

“It doesn’t take a master healer. I’ve seen a hundred times worse when my Knights come back from their errands. Bones snapped, run through deep enough to kill a mortal man. It’s a wonder we don’t run out of thread to stitch them together.”

“I’ve never heard anything so--” Tirion stopped himself before he finished the damning thought. He knew what the death knights were. He knew they could withstand things that made regular men break. The thought of their unliving bodies being stitched together when they lived beyond their natural lives made him sick to his stomach. Wrong is wrong.

“I was waiting for this day.”

“What day?”

“The day when your sympathy showed its limits. You can write letter after letter asking world leaders to accept us as soldiers. You can watch the Ebon Black hack its way across Northrend and leave a miles-long trail of Scourge in their wake. You can sit here and lecture me about redemption without blinking, but the truth is there. What we are disgusts you.”

“Darion, please. I’m on your side, but you can’t just say something like that and expect me not to react.”

Darion regarded him, his expression unreadable. “If you’re to mediate between the Ebon Blade and the living, you need to understand what you’re supporting. All of it, Fordring, not just the pieces you can idealize or wish away. My brothers deserve better than an old man with no conception of their reality. They deserve a genuine defender.”

“I didn’t know it mattered so much to you,” Tirion admitted.

You old fool. Of course it matters. These were Darion’s people. He was all they had and he knew it. If Darion was capable of anything resembling love, he would feel it for them, his brothers in death. He was alive when he should have been rotting in the dirt, but he was still Darion Mograine, the man who’d given his life to end his father’s corruption. The death knights were his family now… a family he would die to protect. Right is right.

“I always wondered if you felt something other than hatred or if he’d stolen that from you too.”

He expected a reprimand from Darion, as was common when he chose to express his feelings. This time, there was no criticism of his character.

“You have your answer. Does it ease your fear, Highlord? Does it strengthen your faith?”

Tirion did his best to be still while the needle went through the cut on his chest. The cold hands served to comfort rather than unnerve him though the chill wasn’t pleasant. Where Darion’s hands had been forceful before, they were nimble with the needle, able to stitch him up efficiently before the cut had the chance to get infected. Had it been another man, Tirion would have called the touch gentle. It might have been gentle still, had Darion not despised the idea of being called anything short of fearsome.

If there was anyone he had faith in, it was Darion Mograine.

“Good as new,” he said at last. When he pulled his hands away, Tirion felt their absence like a brand.


	3. Icecrown

“As a soldier, confidence in your own prowess and faith in your fellow soldiers had as much a role in your victories as the reality of your strength,” Archbishop Faol had told him. “The Light is no different. Our faith in what is right drives our ability to wield the Light regardless of our worthiness. It is bestowed most strongly in those who believe. Your faith must be absolute, Tirion, or it will abandon you. You must prove yourself a worthy wielder, or we are doomed.”

The archbishop’s words proved true after Uther had stripped him of his place in the Silver Hand. The Light cared little for mortal law. It was a matter of will. He’d willed the Light to forgive him and it had. He’d willed the Light to protect him from Arthas and he’d lived to see another day. He longed for things to be so simple when it came to Darion Mograine.

“The Argent Tournament will bring the Alliance and Horde together,” he said. “They have to put aside their differences to defeat the Lich King. Let them prove their worthiness to face our enemy.”

“Icecrown is ours to conquer! This is our home to defend, not yours, Fordring! I’ve told you from the beginning we staked our claim here.”

“You can’t be serious! We have the same goal! You can’t turn us away if we’re to have any hope of defeating the Lich King! What are you thinking? Are you out of your mind?”

Darion’s demeanor changed. It was like the humanity was sucked out of him. His blue eyes glowed brighter as he closed the distance between them. Tirion could feel the aura of undeath around him. I should have known. Darkness is the absence of light. “Do you honestly think jousting will prepare your people for what’s ahead? You don’t know what lurks in that citadel. You can’t imagine the warped abominations of his designs. You can’t know what he does to those who won’t break under his command. If you survive past his gates, you won’t like what you find.”

“Only the Light can defeat a darkness so great. You know that; you’ve done it yourself. You won’t stop me unless you kill me.”

“Don’t tempt me.” There was no power in the threat.

“I know you don’t want to share your vengeance, but this isn’t the time to refuse help. We can only raid the citadel together, as a united planet. You have to see the sense in that!”

“You think this is about my vengeance? I don’t care who strikes the final blow. I never did.” Tirion didn’t think it was possible for Darion to get closer to him, but he did. Tirion took a step backward and his back was against the law. He felt trapped by Darion’s gaze. There was something treacherous burning in his eyes.

“Then what, if not vengeance?”

“I know my old master. He has grand plans for you. If you enter his home, you’ll become everything you fought against. This is about your soul and its fate. The Light didn’t protect any of us against him. It won’t protect you.”

Darion Mograine wanted him to live. The words overtook him like a hurricane. The Highlord of the Ebon Blade was concerned – protective, even – for his soul’s fate. His heart lurched at the realization. If there was an appropriate way to respond to a death knight’s care, he didn’t know what it was. He just stood inches from Darion, mouth agape, searching for words.

Darion read Tirion’s silence as defeat. “Will there be no convincing you?”

“If there was another way, I would gladly agree to walk away. This is our fight as much as yours. The Light will be victorious. When it is, I’ll remind you to never doubt me again.”  
Your faith must be absolute. Do not falter, Tirion Fordring, lest your people die because of your shortcomings.

 

He thought those doors would never bust open, but at last the battering ram broke through and they flooded into the citadel. The air was colder than any winter wind, but Tirion shouted to his men to press forward for Azeroth. He could sense the evil all around him in the mangled bodies of the undead roaming the halls and clawing at his men. He repelled a ghoul back with a slice from the Ashbringer. Scourge were everywhere, like cockroaches infesting an inn.

That wasn’t the worst of it.

He felt the screams as much as he heard them. A familiar voice crying in agony, vowing never to serve. It made him sick to his stomach. Can it be… Bolvar? What have they done to you, brother?

“Save the paladin!” the cry went out across the room, sounded by Alliance and Horde alike. If Bolvar was alive, there was hope of unity. If Bolvar was alive, the Light would prevail.

Tirion felt Darion’s heavy gaze from across the room. “Push forward to the Upper Citadel. You know what must be done, brothers! Suffer well! Death to the Scourge!”

“For the Ebon Blade!” The rallying cry sent shivers up Tirion’s neck.

When his soldiers had rushed off to break through the Scourge reinforcements, Darion turned the death knight beside him. He wore a cloth over his eyes. “See that their weapons do not fail, Ormus. This is all I ask of you.”

“As you ask, Highlord.”

Tirion dared to approach him while they waited for the chance to strike. “You told your men to go to the Upper Citadel. Why?”

Darion shrugged. “It’s closest to the Frozen Throne. It’s bound to be infested with all manner of undead. If we can bring them down, our path to the Lich King is clear. Crok will lead the push – a choice you’ll approve of, I’m sure.”

Tirion remembered Crok from the Argent Tournament. He was an orc death knight, capable of slashing his way through Scourge forces. If he was anything like Darion, he wouldn’t stop until the job was done. “When he’s cleared it, I’ll go to the Frozen Throne and do what must be done.”

“Should you not spend these final moments in prayer and communion with the Light, Highlord, rather than standing idly at the side of a man shunned by it?” There was no bitterness there, only irritation.

“The time for prayer has passed, I’m afraid. It’s time for action. What we do here will echo across the ages.”

If Darion was afraid, he kept it well concealed. It was the same resolution he’d showed in the face of his death. He’d been young then, little more than a boy, too young to fight at his father’s side against the Scourge. When his father was corrupted, he came to Tirion, eyes wild, clothes soaked by the pouring rain, desperate for a cure. The only cure was death, too high a price for a boy to pay. When he spoke the price, Darion didn’t blink.

Darion wore fear well. He wasn’t like his brother Renault, who masked his fear with wrath and bitterness, or like his father, who shunned weakness altogether except when it came to his favorite son. It was the thing Tirion had admired most about the boy. Mograine was a boy no longer, but his mettle still held a strange wonder to Tirion.

In a different life, it could have been Darion in the throne room at the Lich King’s mercy. Tirion shook the vile thought away before it could corrupt his faith. Bolvar was holding strong. He could hold for a few more hours. He had to.

“Does he know we’re coming to save him? Could he hear us in the lower halls?”

“If he didn’t hear, Frostmourne will burn the knowledge into him. He will know agony because of our defiance. It may twist him into someone new by the time you reach him.”

In the strained moments of waiting, Tirion prayed they weren’t too late to save his paladin brother from a fate a thousand times worse than death. Your faith must be absolute. Had Bolvar’s faith wavered, or would he stay true until the bitter end?


	4. Peace

“Bolvar didn’t survive.” The words were bitter on his tongue. Tirion hated telling lies, but this was more than a secret. It was a necessity.

The Lich King is dead, and Bolvar Fordragon died with him. Bolvar’s last mortal words haunted Tirion Fordring in a way his death never would have. It was meant to be a secret between old brothers, kept locked deep in Tirion’s heart until his dying day.

“Half-truths are good for peace among your people.” Darion knew the truth. Whether it was some mystical sense related to his undeath or his ability to read Tirion, the paladin couldn’t say. “Bury your knowledge, then, and hope the rest of the world forgets.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since his head touched that accursed crown. My will may be my own, but my life is bound to his forever, a constant reminder of what I am.”

Tirion tried to mumble something like an apology. The words stuck at his throat. After all they’d done, Darion was still bound to the Lich King. He would still be haunted by what he did. Still a slave. Black is black and white is white and the pieces don’t change places. You knew that.

He’d known, but he’d hoped for more. Darion deserved infinitely more.

“Don’t trouble yourself with the details. This was a great victory for Azeroth, and you were instrumental to our success. What more could you want?”

“Some measure of happiness for you! I dreamed this day would mean your liberation! I prayed for it like nothing else! For all my striving and all your good deeds, I thought perhaps a better end…”

Darion sighed. If there was a hint of grief there, it wouldn’t be for himself. He couldn’t be selfish, couldn’t find nerve to care for himself after the things he’d done. “There was no hope of salvation for me, only vengeance. I knew that from the beginning. You delivered that well. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

“It was our good fortune to have you as an ally storming the Citadel. Having you at my side was...” Tirion searched for the right words. Anything he thought of saying fell short of what he felt.

Having Darion at his side made him feel a dozen things. Things he shouldn’t feel for a former agent of the Scourge. Things it was wrong for a paladin to feel toward a being beyond the Light’s reach. He believed in the absolute power and authority of the Light, for it was the Light that saved him at the Frozen Throne. It didn’t stop him from feeling for Darion, and the realization shook him to his core.

“I would die a thousand deaths and slay a thousand fallen princes to honor my father’s memory. I worry for his fate as I never worried for mine.”

In another world, Tirion might have put a reassuring arm around the death knight’s shoulder, but he worried Darion didn’t have the stomach for base affections. “Alexandros was a righteous man. He loved you unconditionally, more than life itself. Anyone could see it in the way he doted on you. He would be proud of your sacrifices.”

“Too easily you discount the bad to praise the good. Is it not the job of paladins to discern the righteous from the corrupted? Should you not despise evil when it stares you in the face?”

“It would be simpler if I despised you… but not better.” He hesitated to say more. The truth would likely be more twisted to Darion than it had been to Tirion. It was too much to risk, too much of his soul to lay bare.

“Half-truths never suited you.”

“The truth would disgust you.”

“You lack the imagination to disgust me.” The hint of a challenge lingered in Darion’s protest.

“I was called to the path of righteousness when I was young and have lived most of my life by the ways of the paladin. I was one of the first; I had to be the strongest, the most faithful, for the sake of the people I was trained to protect. It’s all I have and all I can be. I want things no paladin should want. I see the error in how I feel. It goes against all I was taught. The Light doesn’t reject me for it, but I know right and wrong. I know morality. By all measures, what I want isn’t moral.”

“And what is it, this unholy desire you speak of?”

“You, Darion, now and always.”

The silence that followed was almost enough to break him. With a mortal man, there would be a sign: a change in the eyes, a drawn-in breath, a subtle shift in natural rhythm to tell him what to expect. With death knights, it was impossible to tell. If there was a shift in Darion’s demeanor, it was imperceptible. He was terribly still in his silence.

“Darion...”

“Danger lies in what you seek. Had you considered that?”

“It crosses my mind from time to time.”

“But not enough to deter you.” Darion was watching him, assessing him. To anyone else, it might have seemed predatory.

“I don’t know what your limits are,” he admitted, suddenly ashamed. “That is, I don’t know what you’re capable of feeling. Love for your father is different than--”

“Yes, I know the difference. No need to explain.” A hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “As for what I can or cannot feel, I can make no promises. Shame, loyalty, admiration are familiar to me. The kind of attention you crave--”

“You can say ‘love’, Darion. The Light won’t burn you for it.”

“What do you ask of me? How would this unconventional pairing manifest, were I able to give you what you wanted?”

There would have been a day in his youth when Tirion would have weighed his options. He would have understood the consequences of what he said and did and all the possible outcomes. In his old age, his reasoning was still intact. He knew the weight of rejection. More importantly, he knew what he did stood against a lifetime of striving to be everything a good paladin was. He would have considered right and wrong once. He would have chosen his moral absolutes over his happiness.

He’d been to hell and back. The time for thinking had passed. Before he could pause and regret it, Tirion closed the distance between them and pressed his lips against Darion’s.

His lips were colder than death against Tirion’s, but welcoming all the same. Nothing about Darion should have made him feel welcome – the man was a weapon, after all, a creation weaved to bring devastation across the planet. His hands gripped Tirion’s arms so strong the skin was sure to bruise. The unnatural cold of his flesh made Tirion feel feverish. There was a trace of desperation in the way Darion clung to him, like the experience of having a living thing so close terrified him.

Tirion couldn’t remember feeling so alive, morals be damned.

“I knew you were capable,” he breathed. “At Light’s Hope, when that vision freed you, I saw some chance of absolution.”

“In your eyes only, Fordring.” There were traces of affection in his tone.

If anyone was capable of knowing him and loving him, it was Darion Mograine. He buried his head in the fabric of Darion’s shirt, and in that moment, he had hope. A part of him had hoped for this since Light's Hope. To be seen by Darion, to dig into the shades of grey to find the pureness beneath. He could feel it there, shackled by death but present nonetheless. He could catch glimpses of the young man he'd admired through the hardened commander; he could see Alexandros Mograine's son through the glowing blue eyes and the saronite armor. Darion was white and black. He hoped one day, if death found him, he might find peace and absolution.

Hope was all he had. For the time being, it would have to be enough.


End file.
